Tuesday, July 27, 2010

And I feel like that has pretty much been the title of my last 5 or so posts. Its been a while indeed, but I think it's time to return to my blog because things have changed a lot since I last wrote in and, well, I sorta miss it. It's just nice to have a place to sort out your thoughts every now and then, and whether or not anyone reads it, well, let's live in a little self-indulgence for once.

So indeed things have changed. Let's start here--I am now a yoga teacher, and have been teaching yoga full time for over a year now. I also own a little studio on Commercial Drive with my lovely and amazing partner Coco [www.eastsideyogastudio.com]. I think about yoga a lot and maybe if I write about it here, my nearest and dearest will get a break from my yammering on. And there is SO MUCH I want to talk about!

I think I'll start, though, with a class I took yesterday with the lovely Sjanie McInnis, an Anusara Inspired yoga teacher at Yaletown YYOGA. She started off the class with this story--this weekend, she said, there were tons of great yoga events happening. And she didn't go to any of them. She went to the beach instead. SJanie went on to theme the class on desire, mature, adult desire, and the need to stop punishing yourself with 'shoulds' that just end up ruining your day. Because being at the beach with your partner is an awesome way to celebrate life, and what else are we here for? To follow some prescription of a life we are supposed to be living rather than the one we want? Well honestly I don't know.

I was lucky to run into Sjanie yesterday because I think I really needed to hear that message. I'm one of those people that likes to be busy all the time, have a million projects on the go, and be in a constant state of accomplishment. It gets stressful and I get tired, but i am actually a little afraid of what happens when I stop.

Sjanie was talking about how our culture is in this new paradigm now where we are richer and freer than we have ever been before, and a lot of us are filled with options in a way that even our parent's generation had no idea about. We are stuck with this anxiety of choice--how do we fill our time? Who do we really want to be? That is a hard question, actually, and I've been thinking about it a lot lately. I am in many ways exactly where I want to be right now--I am doing what I love and [i think] what I am good at, and I have an awesome little studio in a great neighborhood that is creating a community of people that are excellent. So what do I do with my time off, when I've done what I can for the studio and I've done my teaching for the day?